The Devil's Highway Sparknotes

The author of the book The Devil's Highway: A True Story, is Luis Alberto Urrea, who was born in Tijuana, Mexico in 1955. Urrea grew up in poverty and was raised in California, his father is Mexican and his mother American. (Urrea, 2017) Urrea graduated from the University of California and completed the graduate program at the University of Colorado. He has written 16 books and also writes poetry. Correspondingly, the book The Devil’s Highway: A True Story, won the Lannan Literary Award and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the Pacific Rim Kiriyama Prize. Other books of his have also won prizes like the Christopher Award, and an Edgar Award for the best short story in the genre mystery. Also, Urrea is a part of the Latino Literature Hall of Fame. His books are used in college classrooms across the country, he has taught at Harvard University and Louisiana State University. (Urrea, 2017)

The book begins by giving the reader a preview of the brutal desert, the devil’s highway.

Depicting a group of people lost, with no water, in the heat of the sun, hoping to find either a civilization or a water source, but not just any group of people, the Yuma 14. The Yuma 14 are a group of immigrant men who died on the devil’s highway, twelve others survived. Then moves into a very brief history of Spanish colonialism, and the civil war, and everything in between. Also including various stories, for example, the Sand Papagos who had an appetite for human meat specifically Mexican.  As well as other apparitions in the desert like the white woman or the blue woman who would taunt people, and the endless deaths that have occurred, and will continue to occur. Then focusing on the border patrol agents, who enjoy messing with the immigrants when they can. An example of that would be the agent who pretended to shoot and kill a rabbit from miles away, amusing everyone because the immigrants believed

him.
    The purpose of the book was to inform the reader of how the Yuma 14 ended up dead in the devil’s highway. Not specifically with their travel to the devil’s highway, but the push and pull factors that drove them to cross the border. The fact that when the men died everyone was interested in them, they were even seen as heroes in the eyes of Mexico. But nobody discussed the sad truth that food prices were increasing, but not wages, and everything was becoming unobtainable. To start a discussion about the dangerous process
    Was author successful, does his argument make sense, persuade you, why or why not
    In the afterward of the book, Urrea said, “ as I started the work, I will confess, it was all about the good men who died. I was sick of the endless toxic reductions of these pilgrims, the demeaning rage directed toward them.” (Urrea,2014) He intended to write poorly about the immigration officers, and victimize those who survived and died in May 2001. Although those were his intentions, the book doesn’t have a sense of biases. In my perspective the book was raw and to the point, you can’t censor information like this because it might seem like one group is seen as the cat trying to catch the defenseless mouse.
    Overall the author did an exceptional job of writing the book. Every part of the first paragraph to the last was so descriptive that it felt like you were right next to the characters in the book. Experiencing what they went through, as well as seeing the hallucinations, and demons they encountered. The pain of not being able to identify the Juan doe, or find family members. Also giving a vivid image that Mexicans were not the only ones who crossed through the devil’s highway, but Arabs and Russian would also cross that border.